


New, But the Same

by ApatheticByDefault



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 21:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1956723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticByDefault/pseuds/ApatheticByDefault
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A club goer tells Ian he's the happiest person he's ever met, before asking him what drug he's taken and where he can get it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New, But the Same

**Author's Note:**

> I just desperately needed a story to be written that explored Ian's perspective of all his life, and not just the minut details of it.

A club goer tells Ian he's the happiest person he's ever met, before asking him what drug he's taken and where he can get it.

Ian removes the customer's hand from his leg as smoothly as it begins to run the length of his thigh and repositions it closer to his hips while he gyrates.

He tells the man it's not one that can be bought, and, when confusion runs rampantly through his mind, Ian doesn't know, because the man's face is expressionless and held directly under his chin.

Ian'd once heard that most of all the beauty in the world had something to do with nature. There would never be an art piece that could compete with the wash of colours in the sky and all the things its creation could only ever be at best inspired by. The things you'd want to look the longest at and would wonder the greatest thoughts for would have been determined without and long before you. They couldn't ever be changed, and they could never be copied or replicated in a lab, even if one were wearing the finest of white coats.

Ian only understands when nature takes a hold of him, and he realises he is the one cradling himself, a hurricane birthed of another. Life can't be created without life, life less so without nature, and the paradox runs longer and more deeply than Ian has the mind to scope the possibilities of, so he doesn't.

Nature creates life, science does not. Nature creates science but gives not with two hands.

So it is a truth well accepted in his mind that a lab could never discover a drug that could compete with any that had always been where life, soul, and mind were concerned. Drugs are there to lift you high, but they don't know how to lift you higher, life _does_. Where Ian's mind works, it sees and chases after mountain peaks he witnesses rising higher the closer he gets to the top, and moods hold closely the minds of those who emanate them. Drugs do not.

Ian gets high off himself, and he'll never be rejected like a foreign substance that enters his body to the caution of every synapse in his nervous system. His purpose becomes to be light and happy, and the wondrous thoughts of his mind work to make it happen because his high becomes a living thing whose purpose is to thrive. Drugs can't do what they know not how to.

Thoughts, ideas, people, and moments don't have to be good ones, Ian just needs to percieve them to be, and the illusion will keep alive itself and everything around it where blindness is all that matters.

Still, the regular invites him along with others back to his loft, and Ian goes where he is soon asked what his secret is. He guesses, "Sell your soul to the devil."

Those watching over his lips as they speak for him look bewildered of an assumed inside joke, before laughing as though it were the funniest thing Ian could have possibility said.

Ian guesses it is.

Because something is still coming, and Ian knows it has only everything to do with him.

~~~

Ian always thought he was the smart one. But Lip got the test scores, and Lip's the one who graduated, and he's the one who didn't have to try and so never did.

But Lip would never be smart in the way Ian had always seen himself to be. Ian worked hard to get to wherever he ended up, and even when he struggled, he was smart for just trying. Lip never tried, and he became an illusion, when things came so easy to him that he would never realise how important it was that they did at all.

And Lip could be so _stupid_ , in ways so simple, and in things that came so easily to Ian that he questioned the validity of every grade, test, and system Lip eased his way through seamlessly and without becoming a part of.

Simpler things come to mind. Karen. _Mandy._ You could give Lip anything and everything, and he'd still screw it up, because Lip saw what things were but never what they meant. But Ian had learned the hard way, the only way and therefore the hardest of, that you needed to understand the meaning of things to know you needed them, and not just why, if you ever did.

And you can't learn how to feel, you just do. So Ian thinks, sometimes, that he's a lot smarter than Lip, in ways that matter more when it comes to _needing_ and not _wanting,_ and he feels sorry, too. Maybe, someday, Ian can learn. But Lip will always struggle to know what it means to feel the way Ian knows it's always important. Always.

Feeling has never not come naturally to Ian. It's not a weakness, it's a strength, for some truly know not how to succumb to emotion. Ian thinks that's sad, that one's purpose in life may be something they can't exercise what it means to be human from.

Mickey makes it seem like a bad thing. When Mickey is getting married, Ian knows, he's always _known_ , that Mickey wishes for apathy, because he's too scared the things he feels set in stone who he is and give it worth he sees only as little. He tells Ian subtly that to feel is to be privileged, but Ian knows feeling is a _right_ , the only thing no one could ever take away from him, and the only thing that could stay safe in his mind and matter for all the world was worth, for all he was worth, for all he believes worth simply to _be_ , because it couldn't be touched or seen or judged.

Whatever Ian felt, when it was around Mickey, he knew he could never be only _wrong_ for feeling it when it was felt so strongly that it could not possibly be ignored. Feeling became law in Ian's mind, feeling was everything and perspective, and Ian had never loved so strongly.

When Mickey is stood at the front of the aisle, it's before Ian even walks back into the room of guests and frilly pink dresses, short even where attention is not intended to be grabbed. Ian swallows hard because Mickey awaits a personal decision horrible only in that its horror is not known, because Mickey is so trapped he deems himself to be free. Mickey has succumbed to an illusion, but Ian doesn't think he's stupid. He thinks he's brainwashed.

Ian walks into the room, and Mickey is already there, and he has spent moments looking at things that aren't him, at people that aren't him, and he's going to continue to see everything but Ian, because Mickey has become blind, Ian is sure.

Ian is choking on his own feelings, as the frustration and fury rises in his throat, suffocating him of intelligible thought. He can't make Mickey _see_ , he can't make Mickey do what he wants, even if it's what they _both_ want, even if it's what only Mickey could ever want, what everyone around him needs.

Ian walks into the room of guests, and Mickey had seconds before headed into it to make the biggest mistake of his life, and Ian has spent moments arms crossed and etching sadness further into his mind and disguising it as righteousness and not realising for all the acceptance in the world that Mickey was living and breathing without him. And Mickey was signing in to do it forever.

Ian is scared when it happens. Ian is drunk when it's over. Ian is scared when the night turns into a new day that's so much darker than the events of the one before that it can be said the night really only got blacker.

But Ian has no reason to be frightened, the fright has already ended. But even without reason to feel, Ian does and he does so more strongly than ever before, for longer than he's ever felt strangled by one emotion, and it has never been so hard to bring him back to life from one thing.

Ian doesn't have a reason to be scared or tired, other than that he is, so he finds a million reasons to be in life around him, chooses one, and marks it a monster to run from.

Ian wakes up one morning, and registers not how he feels different, just acts on it.

Ian feels everything so intensely that he no longer questions that he's right to feel everything all at once, because it's all he sees, and all he sees is translucent. It is not new, it just washes over the old like a clear coat of paint and makes the world around him gleam. He makes the world gleam, he just needs to learn how to see it. Sight is an illusion, and not a soul can tell you what you see is wrong. What you see is only what you claim is seen, there, in front of you. And so be it, you are right. And there's more than one way to be.

Ian feels more than anyone he knows, and he's far better at it than anyone he knows too. Fiona. Lip. A crying Liam who doesn't know yet what tears will one day mean. Debbie. Carl. Frank. Mandy. Mickey. But even Ian can be cured.

Ian feels normal, like the person he's always imagined himself to be and always known he was. The person he now feels to be too.

It seems only right when Mickey rubs the palms of his hands hard into the balls of his eyes in the moments Ian tells him he's leaving. Ian knows he's making a mistake, but he's certain he's right to make it.

Ian guesses Mickey must know what that's like. He wishes for but does not care for Mickey to feel the same sense of loss and hopelessness he does in the place of his regrets, a spectator to a loved one making a grand and terrible mistake they are no longer apart of.

The roles are reversed, and happiness has saved Ian.

Ian saved Ian, and maybe he couldn't save Mickey, but there were no regrets and no sorrow, because it became clear that saving Mickey was not any longer his responsibility, and perhaps never _had_ been even a possibility.

The world realigned itself in the atmosphere and into the sun's gravitational pull of a starry solar system so much greater than anything that could ever be seen on earth, and yet invisible to a naked eye whose opinion is the only one that makes itself meaningful in a universe of mindless matter.

The world makes sense, because Ian learns how to give it meaning. Something better comes first.

~~~

It's possible Monica may not just be a drug addict. But she is addicted to the highs.

But Ian discovers she's special in a way few people are. She doesn't need the drugs. She shoots high without them.

Monica is addicted to her mania.

Ian understands happiness, and sadness too. But Monica is depressive, Monica is bipolar. _Polar opposites_. And the polar opposite of a depression can't be just happiness, he _knows_ that now.

Where depression in a world of little more than business and pursuit is a decline, the lows of flickering lights that emit an energy that dies in being absorbed by everything around it from the pain and agony it takes to do small things like toss, turn, and shift eyes open, mania is a feeling of being for the purpose of advancing. Building up in a frenzy, even if things come crashing down, because the urge to rebuild is relentless, and so all is destined to be done.

Sometimes, she gets angry when people try to take the high away from her. He thinks that's because the high has a life of its own, and the chance for it to die away is seen in the agitation of those who try desperately to see it with magnifying glasses. It's invisible, but it still shrinks into itself out of fear.

The feeling of being so powerfully happy, for Ian, is protected by a fiery wall of defense. If you try to take it away from him, he'll snap.

He needs to protect the feeling, and when he's so high in the sky, he knows that.

He shouldn't come down, everyone around him should rise up. Things need to go faster. He's the only person at his party, so he's bound to be the one to crash it.

The weather doesn't come out to greet, the world arrives to salute _it_. When it is sunny out, the people will be too. When it rains, doors close and people stay inside.

If Ian is ecstatic, he'll act on it. When it's over, he'll act on the regret and longing once it has come. But why act on what reason has not announced itself to be?

It would be less logical, rather, to feel something so strong and not relish in it, even if feeling has not become feeling for the reason of the landscape around him.

Monica teaches Ian the best way to stay high is not to know how to come down.

Ian knows the crash is coming, because gravity doesn't forget astronauts, it just lets them believe they're apart of new worlds they've never seen before, and one always has faith that meeting them will mean something.

But if he never were to fall, he'd never know anything but the rush to the sky, and he would neither need nor want to.

So, while the things inside Ian fly high, they float him upward too.

He draws closer to home, and waits for the inevitable fallout. He left knowing it would come and not caring.

Mickey picks up a fallen Ian, once the flash of lights disguising white drugs has flashed as bright and gone out as quickly as he has, sliding him off of the snow-covered pavement.

His family worries about him because they allow their imaginations to run wild, but the real-life and fleshy Ian of home had only managed to bring less than little concern into his siblings' eyes, even when sadness had been right before them.

Silent panic finds its way into their gazes, and Mickey's too, when dark substances bring out urges that lure him to the rooms of strangers and dancing in the blackness of night. No feeling arrives at all when Ian finds himself attempting to crawl out of the barrel of mistakes he's made out of sheer willingness, and when every error in judgement is brought on by a clear-thinking mind.

There is no worry then.

~~~

Ian hopes, when the elation is gone, that the chemicals in his brain won't forget to keep one light on and keep his love for Mickey alive. Ian doesn't just love Mickey, that will never go away, he is in love, and it's as real as mania, as sick too, and just as intoxicatingly good.

He has a nightmare that, once he has been thoroughly broken in for the first time, more than the disorder will need fixing. He's worried that, in feeling too much, he will eventually power off and know not any longer how to feel at all.

He likes to think Mickey has changed, or has grown to feel something more strong than what he has ever felt before, but he knows that not to be true.

Acceptance can come and go without a new carrier, when the atmosphere around one changes. And Ian was, for once, not apart of Mickey's.

Ian's fear had never been, the _problem_ had never been, that what Mickey felt for Ian was not love. Rather, Ian's pain came from a place of knowing that even love was not enough to tie the two together, where Mickey's concerns would always be compliance over happiness.

Mickey had always felt the same burn at his insides Ian had long since felt for him. Mickey did not change, but Ian was sure he had, away and experiencing what would only effortlessly work to shape his view of the land around him for years to come. But so long as the Ian he once knew was gone, the love he felt might be too, and Ian could only wish silently that the feeling of love was so strong that it would change with Ian, and change to cope.

When Mickey stands up and declares himself bluntly, Ian knows it has stayed, but the fear has gone. It's the only cry for help that needed to be answered.

But the roles were reversed, happiness had at last saved Ian, and it would destroy him soon too.

The more that had been built, the more there would be to destroy, and, like a skyscraper that comes crashing down alongside smaller ones, the weight of the floors above the main one would course through each other with the force of masses ever greater than those of much shorter buildings and bring the devestation to a finale at far quicker speeds.

It was inevitable. But Ian would rather be sad without reason than have every right to be, and bear no way or escape so long as life around him stayed the same. If he couldn't overcome himself, he would still be, in a twisted way, strong. If there were something or someone else he could not conquer, he'd never be.

He rises back up from it, but only halfway, following weeks of resting for the big show. He knows it's not the happiest he could be, and he doesn't care, just knows what he knows and feels what he feels, like anyone can and like he knows he will for the rest of his life.

Monica never made it look easy, but she always appeared not to test the strength of herself in fighting it either, because she never did. But however hard you might try not to be apart of the game, and let it take such control that every twist and turn could be deemed intentional, you could never help but to be.

To feel is to live, and Ian has never felt so torturously. He once thought his meaning would be found in a dream, but he knows now he could have only ever found it inside of himself. He, the creator of his own dreams, and the seeker of a filter.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, if you made it through my unnecessarily long translations of my basic thoughts. I know this is something a great deal of people in this fandom don't care to read, because it is not Ian and Mickey-oriented, but I needed to get into a space and write my thoughts on Ian's conflicts, because they're not just the makings of a great story or fantasy/romance but the tellings of issues in the real world I care deeply about. So I appreciate the reading.


End file.
